Giuliani: Cohen is not Trump’s lawyer anymore ‘as far as we know’

Michael Cohen, the embattled longtime personal attorney to President Donald Trump, is no longer playing an active role representing Trump, according to one of the president’s newest lawyers, Rudy Giuliani.

“As far as we know, he’s not,” Giuliani told POLITICO in an interview Friday. “And there’d be nothing for him to do right now.”

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Trump as recently as last month said Cohen was still representing him in a personal capacity when he told reporters that he didn’t know about a payment Cohen had made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels just weeks before the 2016 presidential election in a bid to help keep her silent about a decade-old alleged affair.

“You have to ask Michael Cohen,” the president said on Air Force One on April 5. “Michael’s my attorney and you’ll have to ask Michael.”

Giuliani said the Trump-Cohen lawyer relationship was still going “probably up until then,” referring to that early April statement by the president to reporters. The president’s current legal team, which Giuliani joined in late April, has “never really determined” a precise day when Cohen stepped away.

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“We’re going to have to for purposes of attorney-client privilege,” Giuliani said. “Once you are somebody’s attorney, even if you cease doing work you still remain bound by the privilege.”

Neither Cohen nor his attorney, Stephen Ryan, responded to a request for comment about Cohen’s current status as a lawyer for Trump.

In early April, FBI agents overseen by federal prosecutors in New York raided Cohen’s office and apartment, as well as a hotel room. The longtime Trump lawyer — his relationship with the tycoon-turned-president dates back a dozen years — is a figure in the ongoing Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, but Manhattan-based government attorneys have said in federal court that he is also under separate investigation for his business dealings.

Cohen was an early supporter of the president’s political ambitions, and he served as a prominent 2016 campaign adviser and spokesman, despite disagreements with others around Trump.

While Cohen didn’t get a job in the Trump White House, he remained close to the president and was present for some of his earliest strategy sessions about the unfolding Russia probe, including a White House meeting nearly a year ago on the day after Mueller’s appointment.

Trump and Cohen also reportedly had dinner together in March at the president’s Mar-a-Lago retreat in South Florida. And they spoke by phone in April as their lawyers were working together to try to shield materials seized in the FBI raid.

Giuliani in the Friday interview said he isn’t concerned about legal exposure to the president surrounding Cohen’s role on the Russia case.

“I don’t think he was involved enough,” he said. “It might be enough to conflict him but not enough where he had any substantial knowledge or involvement.”

Trump, in an interview with “Fox & Friends” last month, did try to distance himself from Cohen by saying he represented “a percentage of my overall legal work — a tiny, tiny little fraction.”